Reflective account

1. Provide a reflective account of how you met one (or more) of the GPhC’s standards for pharmacy professionals. The GPhC will tell you which standard(s) to choose from each year.

• Describe briefly about your area of work (the setting of your practice and your main roles).
• Describe briefly who the typical users of your service(s) are.
• Describe how you meet the standards for pharmacy professionals we have selected.
• Give a real example(s) taken from your practice to illustrate how you meet the standards we have selected.

I am a pharmacist working in a hospital setting. I am the lead pharmacist for medicine, providing a clinical pharmacy service to the medical wards.

My service users are patients and other professions working on the wards.

(What, where and who)
I was involved in a patient confrontation; an elderly patient was unhappy with the hospital stay and wanted to be discharged home. 

She was under the care of the multidisciplinary team for medicine. She had been seen on the MDT ward round and told that she was medically fit for discharge, but still awaiting a medicine that she needed to be counselled on and trained to self-inject. 

The issue was raised with me by the discharge team. I explained that the medicine had to be sourced from abroad and apologised for the delay. Although she remained annoyed, I was able to make her understand what the delay was, and she returned to her bedside. 

She did not seek further clarification that day.

At the time, I felt rushed and frustrated. I had a lot of other work to be done and this was distracting from that. She had already been told that she would need to have the dosing, side effects and how to self-inject explained to her in the morning. I understood why this was difficult for her but did not think I would be able to do anything to help to speed up the process.

(Why did it happen?)
The morning ward round was quite rushed and so our explanation was limited to telling her about the medicine. I can understand from her point of view this may have meant very little, and so my explanation of what exactly what was happening may have relieved some frustration. Having been waiting up to this point, it is no surprise she continued to be angry, but may have been accepting of this plan.

(Could you have done anything differently?)
I think my explanation was very good, and the patient seemed happy with this, although I did not give a rough idea of how long this would take. Also, I did not ask her whether she was happy with this explanation: I may have been able to satisfy her frustration further by answering a few more questions. 

Although the information given in the ward round was correct, it was not understandable to the patient. If this had all been quickly clarified in the morning, the patient would have been happy throughout the day and not caused a problem later on.

(What will you do differently in the future?)
I think that the cause of the problem in this situation was our explanation on the morning ward round. 

To avoid a similar situation in the future, I will speak to the other health care professionals on the ward and advise them of any anticipated supply issues with medicines for patients so we can make everyone aware as early as possible.

1. Provide a reflective account of how you met one (or more) of the GPhC’s standards for pharmacy professionals. The GPhC will tell you which standard(s) to choose from each year.

• Describe briefly about your area of work (the setting of your practice and your main roles).
• Describe briefly who the typical users of your service(s) are.
• Describe how you meet the standards for pharmacy professionals we have selected.
• Give a real example(s) taken from your practice to illustrate how you meet the standards we have selected.

I was involved in a patient confrontation; the patient was unhappy with her hospital stay and wanted to be discharged home. Unfortunately, she required a medicine where there was a delay in supplying, and she could not be discharged because it required her to be counselled and trained in self-injecting (once-a-week). 

I explained this and she returned to her bed. I was happy I had explained everything to her and continued with my other jobs.

1. Provide a reflective account of how you met one (or more) of the GPhC’s standards for pharmacy professionals. The GPhC will tell you which standard(s) to choose from each year.

• Describe briefly about your area of work (the setting of your practice and your main roles).
• Describe briefly who the typical users of your service(s) are.
• Describe how you meet the standards for pharmacy professionals we have selected.
• Give a real example(s) taken from your practice to illustrate how you meet the standards we have selected.

I am a pharmacist working in a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which oversees the implementation of local prescribing formularies in line with my STP footprint. I am also the Education and Training lead for our CCG which means I champion the development of our 10 pharmacists.

My service users are the pharmacists within my project team and also the 10 pharmacists who rely on me for their Education and Training opportunities.

(Who, what, and why)
Part of my role is to ensure that the Education and Training budget for our team is appropriately managed. I will liaise with our team to identify their learning needs for the following 12 months and find learning opportunities that meet these needs.

It was approaching the end of our financial year and I could see that a number of our team had not organised any personal development opportunities. If the team did not use the allocated resource, it would be lost, and this seemed to be a waste of money and a lost opportunity for personal and professional development.

I compiled a short list of courses that I felt would be useful to members of my team and circulated them via email. As a result of this, two members of my team managed to secure places on a formal project management course which would feed into their roles, supervising various work streams that our team was working on.

One member has recently completed a project implementing a local prescribing formulary for primary and secondary care and the execution of the project, including the deliverables, have definitely benefited from the additional training he has undergone. The project was finished on time, within budget, and presented exceptionally well to our stakeholders. By contributing to the education, training and development of the team I have demonstrated how I have met the standard “effective leadership”.

When I noticed that we hadn’t utilised our training resource for this year, I was initially concerned that we might lose this and the impact it would have upon next year’s allocation. I was also slightly frustrated with my team for not prioritising this within their work to ensure that they continue to develop professionally and personally. However, I can understand that this would fall to the bottom of their list, as they are all so busy with their day jobs that it can often be difficult to find the time to prioritise such matters.

(Why did it happen?)
As mentioned, it can often be difficult for team members to find the time and headspace to think about their own personal development, whilst trying to deliver on projects that they are responsible for. It is also difficult for some members of my team to see the value in attending additional training courses unless they can see a tangible benefit to their work. Both of these could have contributed to the fund not being used.

Additionally, I may have struggled to focus on supporting others with their learning as it has slipped as an organisational priority, again due to external pressures and workload. Therefore, I have not been as proactive in supporting others as I should have been.

(Could you have done anything differently?)
I think that I could’ve been more proactive in my approach with my team and identified clear learning opportunities with them at the start of the year. I could have also paid more attention to their development as the year went on, rather than being prompted by the financial agenda. Furthermore, rather than just sending an email to the team with some suggested courses, I could have met with them individually and understood their training needs in greater detail, so I could have tailored my suggestions for additional training, to best suit their needs.

(What will you do differently in the future?)
Going forward, I will ensure that I meet early on with my team members to discuss their identified learning and developmental goals. I will do this shortly after they have met with their line managers, for their yearly reviews. This will enable me to work with them, throughout the year, to help achieve their goals. I will also have a mid-year meeting with them to see how they are progressing and use that opportunity to support them to identify any opportunities they wish to pursue.

• Describe briefly about your area of work (the setting of your practice and your main roles)
• Describe briefly who the typical users of your service(s) are
• Describe how you meet the standards for pharmacy professionals we have selected
• Give a real example(s) taken from your practice to illustrate how you meet the standards we have selected.

As part of my role, I look after the Education and Training budget for our team. We were coming to the end of the financial year, and we had money left over which I was keen to use. 

I know many of my colleagues had identified training needs in their PDRs but had not managed to organise any training. Therefore, I contacted my team members to highlight this fact and asked them to choose something from a list of courses I had found. 

This met the standard “effective leadership” as I am contributing to the education, training and development of the team and others for whom I have some responsibility. 

As a result of this, two of my team members chose to attend a formal project management course, which has helped them execute a recent project that they were responsible for. The results have been impressive!